Chapter Fourteen
I drove faster than was safe, terrified that Nick would have started travelling, got caught up in one of the many things that were liable to take his attention from the task in hand, and decided to sleep rough. The temperature was plummeting below freezing and the wind kept beating snow on the sides of my little car; even Ranulph Fiennes and his huskies would have gone home to bed on a night like this.
There was no sign of Nicholas. I drove up and down the motorway for a bit then parked in the Service Station and rang his mobile again, but it went straight to voicemail. I rang the flat he shared with several other lads, but no one was there either. As I was about to pull back out onto the almost deserted dual carriageway my phone rang and I snatched it up, my heart thundering. ‘Nicky?’
‘No, it’s Kai. Are you all right?’
‘Cold and my tyres seem to have lost all grip. You?’
‘I’m in York, waiting for a train. Someone thought they saw a guy who looked a bit like Nicholas on the platform at Berwick getting on a train headed south. Where are you?’
I told him, clutching the steering wheel so hard that my fingers went grey. ‘How did you find out about Berwick?’
‘I put the word out. Being a journalist has its advantages, sometimes. The staff on Berwick railway station are very friendly, you know.’
‘God, I hope it’s him.’
‘So do I. Look, the weather is pretty diabolical, why don’t you get back to your place. One of us on the roads is enough tonight. It’s getting dangerous and I’ve got the Jeep. Your car doesn’t have four wheel drive, does it?’
‘I consider myself lucky that it’s got four wheels.’
‘Then get home. There’s nothing to be gained by being in a nine-car pile-up, and I’ll keep looking until even the Jeep can’t handle it any more.’
‘Thank you.’
I heard the smile in his answer. ‘That’s all right. This is nicely distracting, if you know what I mean,’ and he hung up.
I drove very carefully back to my house, where the heating was battling to keep the draughts at bay, drew the curtains and cried for a bit. I couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear the thought of Nicholas somewhere out in the cold, alone and confused. Or the awful sorrow that I’d seen on Kai’s face at the idea of his birth mother trying to find him after thirty-something years. And a little bit of introspective horror at the realisation that what I’d really and truly felt on hearing Nicholas had disappeared, was relief.
I rang Megan on the house phone, leaving my mobile where I’d see its flashing Incoming Call light.
‘Hey, Holl. Isn’t it a filthy night? The snow is nearly over the top of my window ledge. I’ve got the phone in bed, it’s the warmest place.’
A little bit of tension went out of me at the normality of her chat. She might not be the most practical person on the planet, but Meg was always there for me. ‘Yeah, it’s disgusting. I’ve got the heating going full blast and it’s still chilly in here.’
‘You remember that dog from the yard? It’s so cold, and I didn’t like the thought of him being out there with no shelter, so I let him into the passageway.’ She spoke quickly, and I knew she was lying.
‘He’s on your bed, isn’t he?’
‘Well . . . Holl, he’s so thin and so sweet, and I offered him a tin of stewing steak and he ate it so fast, I’m sure he’s been starved, and I gave him a bath and he looked so grateful,’ she said in a rush. ‘I’ll find out who he belongs to when the storm dies down.’
‘Right now I’d settle for a mangy dog,’ I muttered.
‘Sorry?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Oh, and Vivienne wants us all over at hers tomorrow morning at nine, if the roads are clear enough. She said that it’s time for us to perform some devotions, or something like that. To get the spell to start working.’
‘Do you think the spell knows that there’s two feet of snow lying? Don’t you think it might cut us some slack?’ I looked out into the darkness. The main road, which lay outside the front of my house, was empty. Every so often an enormous truck or snowplough would barge its way through the deepening snow, but there was no regular traffic and cars were parked up where my neighbours had got home early. I felt a lurch in my stomach. ‘Anyway. I might see you there, if I can dig my way through.’
‘The ploughs are out. Roads will be clear by morning.’
‘Okay. Look, I’d better go.’ Nicholas might be trying to get through on the landline. Or Kai. ‘Stay safe.’
‘You too, Holl. Oh, look what he’s done! Get down ! Or sit, or something . . .’
I checked the phone. No one had tried to ring. I went to the front window and stared out at the misleadingly soft whiteness. People died in this stuff. They lay down and they froze, or their cars went off the road, or they . . .
My mobile rang. Kai didn’t waste time on pleasantries. ‘I’ve got him.’
‘Oh thank God.’ I was afraid I might cry again. ‘Where are you?’
‘Back at mine. I picked Nick up, then went on to his doctor’s, got him some emergency meds. By then we were nearer here than your place, and the roads are getting so bad I thought I’d better come back. You know, with Cerys and everything.’
‘No, that’s . . . it’s fine. Is he . . . ? Can I speak to him? I ought to come and get him.’
‘Don’t worry about coming. He was pretty strung out when I got to him, but the doc gave him something and he’s asleep now.’
‘Oh, Kai.’ I swallowed. I wanted to say something else but my throat seemed to have swollen. ‘Kai.’
‘Hey,’ and his voice was soft. ‘Everything’s okay. Go to bed Holly. You can fetch Nicholas tomorrow, but don’t hurry, wait until the roads are clear. He’s fine here.’
My heart was calming down now. ‘You are brilliant, Kai Rhys.’
A smile in his words. ‘Yeah, yeah. See you.’ And he put the phone down.
I had too much of the adrenaline of relief to want to sleep. I decided to watch TV for a bit, so I wrapped myself in a fleecy blanket and snuggled down on the sofa. There, life wasn’t so bad, was it? My brother was safe, I had a plate of toast, warm toes and some trashy programmes, it was going to . . .
What was that ?
It came again, an insistent kind of tap-tapping. I looked around the room. Was the snow leaking in through the roof? But I was downstairs. And besides, it was a harder, more brittle sound. I tweaked the curtains open to look out onto the road again. ‘Holy shit!’
Outside my window was a dark shape, arm raised, making scratchy little noises against my front window. It was hideously misshapen, hunched and deformed, with a hooded head that looked far too big for the body. I stood, frozen, looking out at it as, very black against the white snow, it raised the arm again.
And this time it pushed back the hood and showed me its face.
‘Aiden? Aiden? What the hell . . . ?’ I dashed to the front door where Aiden, swathed in layer after layer of coat, fleece, scarf and really stupid hat, met me. ‘Why didn’t you just knock?’
‘I didn’t know if you had company.’ He stamped his feet free from snow and took off an upper layer. ‘I didn’t want to intrude.’ He nodded towards the street. ‘Drove down this afternoon.’
I stared at him. He came into the house and was peeling off more and more layers, like an Ann Summers version of pass the parcel, and had got down to jeans and T-shirt. ‘Stop now. Why are you here?’
‘I wanted to see you. Wanted to talk.’ He threw himself down on the sofa and stretched out. ‘Okay?’
‘Um,’ I said, staring at him. Aiden was good looking in a put-it-on-the-mantelpiece way, small and fine-boned like an oversized china figurine. That had been the attraction, his looks. That, and the fact that he’d been delighted to meet a woman who wanted nothing more than the undivided attention of the contents of his jeans now and again. I’d never asked for dinner or flowers, or even for him to keep in touch — it was easy enough to find him when I wanted to, Scotland not exactly being coast-to-coast with film directors, whatever the tourist board might want you to think. I was surprised he’d managed to find my house; he’d only been here once, passing through on his way to London and stopping off for a night of, as I remembered it, the kind of sex you had to change the mattress after. Looking at him here, staring at me from under his dark-blond hair with a blissed-out expression, I wondered if, maybe, I’d been wrong to keep it going this long. ‘Tea?’ was all I could think of to say.
‘I’ve brought whisky.’ Aiden groped behind him in the pockets of the shapeless coat and brandished a couple of bottles.
I frowned at him. ‘You know I don’t like whisky.’ I’d told him so often enough when we’d last met, but he suddenly seemed to regard whisky as absolutely necessary to all Scotsmen. Could have been worse, could have been haggis. ‘What’s wrong with tea, anyway?’
‘Hey I spent the last five hours freezing my bollocks off in a car. Tea is not going to cut it. But if it’s what you want . . . all the more whisky for me.’
When I went through to the kitchen to put the kettle on, he followed, like a restless dog. ‘This is new?’ He picked up my carefully colour co-ordinated toaster. ‘Nice. Yellow to match the walls.’ He unscrewed the top of the whisky bottle and started tipping it to his mouth.
‘So, how come you’re here?’ I turned my back to him so he couldn’t see my face. I was still shaken by his arrival.
‘Like I said, I want to talk.’
‘But, you were in the middle of filming!’
‘We wrapped early.’ He sounded confused for a moment. ‘Not sure how, things were going to hell when you came up. But everything seemed to . . . click, somehow. So, I had these days free, and, I dunno, got to thinking about you.’ He came up close behind me and wound his arms around my waist. ‘Thinking about you a lot.’ His mouth nuzzled my hair, then down to my neck. ‘Next thing I knew I’m in the car, half way down the motorway.’
‘But the snow,’ I turned around in his embrace and his mouth rose to meet mine. Aiden always had the knack of pressing all my buttons, even if he did taste of Glenmorangie.
‘It’s only round here. Forty miles north, there’s nothing.’ He spoke against my skin. ‘Forget the tea, Holl, let’s go to bed.’
I must admit the clinch with Kai that afternoon had left me with a lot of spare desire slooshing about, and the relief that Nicholas was safe added to that. And once Aiden slid his hands up inside my shirt, it all got added to by his own particular appeal. ‘Okay.’
‘Why did you really come?’ It was snug in my bed, listening to the lack of sound from outside. Even the neighbourhood cats didn’t feel like fighting in this weather, and the lad from two doors down, who usually came home at three a.m., engine revving, had clearly decided that tonight was not the night to be cruising the streets in a souped-up Micra.
Aiden’s eyes were very dark. ‘Told you.’ His fingers were tracing along my arm, raising little hairs. ‘I wanted to talk to you.’ Our faces were very close together, sharing the same pillow. The other one was on the floor somewhere, bounced from its moorings by vigorous sex, along with a set of handcuffs that Aiden had brought with him. I’d kept a hold on the duvet; this was no night for naked sleeping.
‘You keep telling me that. But you haven’t said anything apart from “oh God, do that again” since we got up here.’
‘Maybe that’s all I wanted to say.’
I smiled. His hair was fanned out behind his head so he looked less like something you’d want as an ornament now, unless your decorative tastes ran to debauched satyrs. Which they might, I’m making no judgements here. ‘Want to say it again?’ I slipped my hand down his torso, sliding it over the scatter of lighter hair that lay across his belly.
He grabbed my wrist. ‘This whole shag-buddy thing. I think we should stop.’
‘Ah. Right, noticing you waited until after we’d fucked like rabbits to say that.’ I shook his hand off. ‘A phone call usually suffices.’
He didn’t smile. ‘Holly, the other day . . . I suddenly realised my feelings for you had changed. I think I want more.’
‘You think !’ I sat up and freezing air shot under the duvet like a frightened ferret. ‘Well, wouldn’t it have been a good idea to be sure , before you came all this way?’ I looked down on him, sprawled beside me, skin still flushed with sex. He was gorgeous. Why was every molecule in my body dumb with panic?
‘Yeah, it was really weird, like, kinda romantic. There I was last week, middle of the afternoon and I’m just sitting in my van mid-shoot, minding my own business and suddenly . . . it was like the earth shifted, y’know? And I realised I wanted us to have a chance to be together. Properly, like a couple. That’s why I’m chucking it all in. Giving up on the film stuff. Thought I’d get something round here, maybe an ad agency in York would take me on, with my background. Move in, take it from there.’
Now panic wasn’t the word. Mindless, wordless terror was more like it. Last week? When we did the spell? Oh, please, no . . . ‘But, Aid . . . we don’t really know each other.’
‘Know you well enough.’ A lazy smile spread over his face. ‘We could get married, d’you fancy that? Big white wedding. I saw your church over there, bit posh but it’d suit.’
‘Hold on.’ There had to be a TV show behind this. One of those that sets you up and films your inevitable downfall? ‘Firstly, we’ve hardly ever had a conversation before, I think you’ve just spoken more words to me in one night than in the last three years. Secondly, yeah, the sex is great, fabulous, but there’s more to a relationship than good sex, Aiden. And thirdly, I don’t want to get married.’
The smile was still there. Wasn’t he listening? ‘Aw, come on, Holl. Give it a try. We make a cracking couple. All right, maybe marriage is a way off, but couldn’t you stand coming home to this every night?’ He waved an arm to indicate the bed and the tumbled bed things. ‘Perfect antidote to workplace stress.’
‘There’s someone else.’ I’d blurted out the words before I’d even thought them. ‘Another man.’
Aiden frowned. This simply drew more attention to his sculpted cheek bones. ‘But you’re here, in bed with me. Where’s he? Nowhere, that’s where.’
‘No, you don’t understand. We’re not sleeping together. But . . . he and I . . . it’s . . .’ And the memory of Kai, intense eyes and long body, came sweeping through. ‘It’s something I can’t describe.’
‘Och, Holly.’ The smile was back. He really was very pretty, Aiden. Pretty and bloody persistent. ‘But I can be indescribable too you know.’ Fingers crept under the covers. ‘And I’m here, you’re horny — let’s see how we go, shall we?’
Okay. So, attempt one to talk him down, epic fail. But . . . oooh, it had its compensations.
We woke next morning to almost clear streets. The ploughs had spent the night keeping the snowfall under control and although the pavements were heaped and cars were quite often blocked in by huge lumps of ice, driving itself wasn’t a problem. My first thought was of Nicholas, and I rang the Old Lodge, the phone being answered by a slightly testy-voiced Cerys.
‘It’s still dark , Holly. I’m only up because I just performed my twenty-third trip to the loo and I’m waiting for my medal. Honest to God, I never knew there was that much liquid in the human body, I should be desiccated to the size of a walnut. And your brother isn’t awake yet, probably won’t be for a few more hours to be honest — when Kai brought him in he was so out of things that he thought I was you. I know drugs are supposed to be bad for you, but anything that makes a nine-month pregnant blonde look like a matchstick-skinny redhead is something I want to start taking as soon as possible.’
‘So Nicholas is still in bed?’
She sighed. ‘Yup. Come round mid-morningish. By then Kai should be up too and I should have passed my entire bodyweight in fluids, so we can chat properly. Okay? I mean, I’d stop and chat now, but I think I might have to go to the loo again.’
Aiden pressed himself against my back and began whispering into my ear, and I barely had time to hang up in a civil way, but at least he made me breakfast when I told him I had stuff to do. He seemed to think it was work — which I suppose meeting up with Vivienne was, in a warped kind of way — and that this was a sign that I was already adapting to his moving in. ‘I’ll get my stuff shipped down,’ he said, pouring fresh coffee from the machine I’d had since I moved in and never unpacked. ‘My furniture can go in storage, until we can find a bigger place.’
I forced my boiled egg down a dry throat and reminded myself that this was Aiden McCullough, the Scottish Spike Jonze, sitting here opposite me. Scourge of many a set, known for his exacting standards and his starlet shafting; at twenty-six still a wild child with a penchant for bondage and walking off set in high dudgeon. And he wanted to marry me? I’d only have been slightly more surprised if Barack Obama had popped up in my living room, told me Michelle was history, and how about a quickie before the next press call.
The freezing air of outside was the sweet air of freedom to me. ‘I’ll wait up for you, if you’re gonna be late back,’ Aiden called, waving me off, wearing only my dressing gown. ‘But don’t be too long, don’t want these to get cold.’ He shook the handcuffs and grinned his old, sexy grin as I fled for the car and starting digging it out with an energy borne of the dread that he might get dressed and try to come with me.
Vivienne looked a bit surprised to see me, which was perfectly understandable, it was only eight thirty. I sat in her living room on the, thankfully well-padded, couch, drank tea and jittered.
‘So, you think the spell should work faster ?’ The cup rattled as I put it in the saucer. It had been one hell of a night. ‘I think I might die.’
Vivienne raised her eyebrows. ‘So it’s working for you?’
I thought about Aiden and his sudden declaration. ‘Well, I seem to have rather more excitement than usual, yes. Although some of it is pretty horrible.’
‘Then you should have thought to wish for something a little more specific. I mean, some people’s idea of excitement is a show at the theatre in Scarborough. It’s not really the spell’s fault that it doesn’t know what you find exciting. What were you expecting, torrid sex?’
‘Got that.’ I thought of Aiden and gave a, not completely horrified, shudder.
‘Death?’
Nicholas’s disappearance had certainly made me scared that he was dead. ‘That too.’
‘Oh, I don’t know then. A man who wants to take you away from everything and shower you with gifts?’
‘Yes, and that.’ Although I wasn’t entirely sure it was gifts that Aiden wanted to shower me with. He still seemed to think that we could build a relationship entirely based on never getting out of bed.
Vivienne’s eyes widened until I could see her rather inexpertly applied eyeliner. ‘Well, I suppose it’s only natural that the spell would work best for you. You supplied ingredients from the warlock’s house, after all.’
‘Is there a way to make it stop?’
A big tabby cat was eyeing my lap. I gave in and leaned back, but it sniffed at me in a generally disapproving manner and settled on the back of the sofa. ‘Stop? Why would you want it to stop?’
‘See above.’ I closed my eyes. A night with Aiden rarely contained much sleep and I must have dropped off because the next thing I was aware of was Isobel and Eve arriving together in the Isuzu.
‘Gosh, you must have been up early,’ Isobel came in first and immediately started to sneeze. ‘Damn.’ Her head disappeared into her oversized handbag as she began the frantic search for a tissue. ‘I ought to start keeping them up my sleeves.’
I gave her cardigan, Laura Ashley frock and old-lady ankle boots the once-over. ‘No, don’t,’ I said.
Eve came in, limping. She’d lost a little weight, I thought, and changed her lipstick to a more flattering pale pink. She and Isobel seemed to be on opposite ends of the self-improvement see-saw. ‘This cold plays havoc with the sciatica,’ she said. ‘Horrible.’
‘Ah, Holly, you’re awake.’ Vivienne rattled in with a refreshed tea pot. ‘Did you have a nice snooze?’
Of course everyone then looked at me as though I was about a hundred. ‘Late night,’ I explained.
‘Torrid sex,’ Vivienne put in, with a face that seemed to indicate that torrid sex was only one step up from ritualised buggery. ‘Holly has been complaining about the results of the spell.’
The other two piled in, talking simultaneously. ‘Results? You think there’s been results?’
‘What sort of results? I’ve not had anything yet. You are lucky, Holly.’
‘Why would you complain? I’d settle for the milkman smiling at me.’
‘ I’d settle for the milkman’s horse smiling at me.’
I waved a feeble hand. ‘Let’s just say that excitement isn’t as exciting as you might think.’
There was a sudden commotion outside the cottage, and cats went flying round the room with their ears flat to their heads, like furry bullets. The cat flap rattled like a saloon door, and Megan entered, being dragged along by a grey panting creature with more teeth than I’d ever seen on display in a mouth that didn’t belong to something in the Winners’ Enclosure at Ascot.
‘Oh my God, Little Red Riding Hood’s gone native.’
‘Don’t, Holl. I didn’t like to leave him all cooped up on his own. He needs a walk, and I thought, if we were going up the hill anyway . . .’ The big grey dog sat in the middle of the room, scratched, and looked pleased with himself. ‘I’m calling him Rufus.’
A lone cat, less adept at reading an atmosphere than the others, wandered in. There was a brief moment of total confusion and when it sorted itself out, I was standing on the sofa holding the teapot above my head. Isobel had a cat clinging to her shoulder like a Halloween witch costume, Eve had been shunted into a corner and Meg and Rufus were hurtling around outside the front door with her shouting ‘Stop it! Down, boy!’ ineffectually. Rufus, I noticed, was grinning. ‘I’ll keep him out here for a while,’ she shouted, completing another circuit of the small front garden. ‘Try to tire him out a bit.’
Isobel sneezed and the cat fell off. ‘Perhaps . . . some fresh air?’ she snuffled.
‘Wait, I need to collect our workshop ingredients,’ Vivienne bustled about looking as though she was doing something really important. Maybe she was, but I wasn’t really convinced, after all, the spell seemed to have worked big time and we’d used some decidedly unorthodox make-dos for that. It hardly seemed necessary at this stage to have exactly the right shade of red for our broom handles.
Eventually, when Vivienne was satisfied, we set out for the hill. Eve stayed behind to keep the fire banked up for our return, pleading sciatica. I wasn’t convinced. Her breathlessness seemed more than mere unfitness and her limp didn’t look entirely sciatic either, but if she wanted to keep to her story, who was I to blow it out of the water?
Megan went first, dog-propelled. Isobel and I wandered up through the snow more slowly. There was no track, other than the double-skid marked out by Megan and Rufus, and the snow was deep enough to cascade over the tops of our boots.
‘So, nothing happening for you on the “centre of the world” thing?’ I asked.
She shook her long, chestnut hair. She had lovely hair, I noticed. If only she’d get a prescription for some antibiotics for the acne and wear something that didn’t look hand-knitted by an elderly spinster, she’d be quite pretty. ‘Nope. I did think that a man was looking at me in the library the other day.’ She sighed.
‘Well, that’s a start.’
‘No, it turned out he’d lost his glasses and thought I was his mother.’ Another sigh. ‘Maybe nothing will happen. Ever. And I’ll stay here, living in Malton and working in the hospital, and spending every evening with Mum and Dad telling me how I should join a club to meet more people . . .’ She sounded angry. Or as angry as she ever sounded, which was not very.
‘Look, the spell seems to be working for me and I wish it wasn’t. So don’t worry too much if nothing happens, it looks like nothing is the better option.’
Isobel shrugged under her ugly knitted coat. ‘I’d just like something to compare nothing to. I’ve never even . . . you know, with a man. I’ve only been kissed once, and that was by mistake.’
‘By mistake? How can you get kissed by mistake? Did he fall onto your face?’
She smiled. ‘It was dark. He thought I was someone else. Story of my life, I suppose.’ She looked around the hill top. ‘I hope those men on bikes won’t come back.’
‘It’s broad daylight and there’s two feet of snow. I don’t even think you can ride a motorbike in snow, can you? And we’ll see them coming for miles, the air is so clear.’
It was, clear and ringing with cold. The distant moors stood like white shoulders shrugging into the bright blue sky and a circle of rooks blew above the hill like a smoke ring. ‘Are we bonkers do you think?’ Isobel asked in a quiet voice. ‘Doing magic and wishing for things we’ll never have?’
I gave her a quick, awkward hug. ‘At least we’re doing something . Oh look, Megan is slowing down. She’s going to be really fit by the time she finds that dog’s owner.’
Meg and Rufus bounced to a collective halt at our usual spot. She looked sweaty and breathless, her top had come untucked and she’d had to start carrying her hat. Her gloves were scattered with snow where she’d kept tripping over and the snowline was somewhere up near her thighs. ‘ Sit ,’ she insisted. Rufus grinned again and started digging. ‘I think he’s part lurcher.’
‘More like part wobbler.’ I patted the grey head and then had to wipe my hand on my jeans.
‘He’s a bit sticky. I don’t know why. But he’s very good natured.’
‘I can see that.’
Vivienne joined us and got her breath back. ‘Here. Candles. Push them into the snow, then light one each.’ We managed, eventually, to get the candles to light. They kept toppling over in the snow and extinguishing themselves with sad little hisses but we persevered until a small ring of fluttering flame punctuated the hilltop. ‘Now this.’
‘What is it?’ I stared at the bag of dark liquid in Vivienne’s hand. ‘It looks like blood.’
‘It . . . well, yes, I suppose it is, technically. ’ Vivienne actually looked a little ashamed.
‘ Technically?’
‘It’s from the butcher.’
The bag swayed from her fingers. It seemed unnaturally swollen, as though the blood inside was treacle-thick. ‘From his shop, or him personally?’
Vivienne ignored me and poked a hole in the corner of the bag, using the result like an icing pen to draw dark crimson circles around each of the candles. When the snow was ringed with gore she stood back and nodded satisfaction, like Delia Smith finishing off a Gothic Christmas cake. ‘Now.’ Out came the notepads and pens again.
‘We don’t have to make another potion, do we?’ Megan anxiously tried to juggle her notepad and Rufus’s lead. ‘My system has only just got back to normal.’
Rufus ate her pen.
‘No. We write our wishes down and then use the smoke from the candles to send them skyward.’
‘Like writing to Father Christmas!’
‘Yes, Megan. Exactly like that.’
I wrote my wish but decided that sending it skyward might draw fate’s attention to me even more. So I balled it in my hand and gave it to Rufus, while everyone else was burning theirs, and as their smoke plumed upwards, my wish went the opposite way, dribble-assisted.
‘Your candle burned white,’ Vivienne observed. ‘It’s a sign that your wish is near completion.’
It was actually nearer digestion, but I couldn’t say that. I nodded and tried to look wise, and like someone who was in possession of a nearly-completed wish. And then I wished that I’d wished my wish was completed, but it was too late because Megan had taken my pen.
‘And now let’s join hands, close our eyes and make a silent appeal to the earth to grant us what we wish.’ Vivienne groped for my hand. I held hers loosely, sure that her palm was still slightly tacky with blood, with Megan’s left hand in mine. She was still holding Rufus’s lead, so her hand kept getting tugged away. Isobel gripped Megan and Vivienne’s spare hands and we all closed our eyes. Far away I heard seagulls calling and the sound of snow falling from overloaded branches in the wood beyond. Underfoot it creaked and whistled and fell into my boots with occasional inrushes which dampened my socks.
‘Feel yourselves,’ Vivienne whispered, and I tried, unsuccessfully, not to giggle. She opened one eye and glared at me. ‘Feel yourselves rooting into the earth, as part of the planet. Experience the cold, the snow, the wind. Hear the voices of the beasts, for they are part of the natural order.’
Unfortunately, just then our domestic part of the natural order let out an enormous, deep bark which made us all jump. I opened my eyes to see Rufus standing outside our circle of joined hands, straining his lead to its furthest extent and staring over the crest of the hill. His hackles were up.
‘What . . .’ I had time to say, before the Land Rover came out of nowhere at us and everything got a bit Scooby-Doo. Rufus ran towards it, barking hysterically, and a dog the size of Rufus barking hysterically is not something you want to get in front of. Megan yelled and tried to grab his lead, but he slipped it through her fingers and took off, heading almost under the wheels.
I looked up at the Land Rover and saw something jutting from a window. Something black and slightly shiny.
‘They’ve got a gun!’ I yelled, dashing forward to grab at Megan, but missing as she ran after Rufus. ‘They’ve got a fucking gun !’
Isobel and Vivienne looked frozen. They just stood as the Land Rover drove in a wide circle around us with Rufus in, well, dogged pursuit, still barking. The windows were dense with water vapour, but I was sure I could make out three figures inside, a driver, a passenger and . . . oh God, this sounded so ridiculous, an armed man. They were vague, smeary shapes, and all seemed to be wearing dark clothing.
‘Get out of here,’ I pulled at Vivienne until she looked at me. ‘Get down the hill. You too, Isobel.’
The Land Rover performed a sharp turn, slid several yards and then came back at us. Rufus slithered, trying to turn as well, but skidded out of the circuit, paws raking at the snow for purchase as the driver gunned the engine and drove between Isobel and me, cutting us like a herd of cattle being prepared for a roping.
A window wound low. ‘Satan’s whores!’ a male voice shouted. ‘We don’t want your kind here. Go take your demon lovers and your black bitch and get out of Barndale!’
Black bitch? I opened my mouth to ask what the hell they were talking about, and then realised they must mean Megan.
I found I’d ducked, which was ridiculous, since guns can just as easily aim downwards. ‘It’s a free country,’ I screamed back. ‘We’re not doing any harm.’
The Land Rover came to a halt. Now I could see inside through the wound-down window, three men wearing full-face balaclavas and baseball hats, like hoodies on a skiing holiday. The one in the passenger seat was holding a shotgun loosely out of the window, finger resting threateningly on the trigger. ‘We said we don’t want your kind here. It’s not open to debate.’
Okay, they wore disguise, but there was no disguising the voices: it was Big Ginge and the Moustache Master. The other man, the one with the gun, didn’t speak. ‘So, what, you kill people you don’t want in your woods? You must have bodies stacked up to the rafters.’
We’d not been shot yet, that was my thought. They were trying to frighten us. All right, they were doing a good job there.
‘Don’t.’ Megan had managed to grab Rufus by the collar and was using all her bodyweight to drag him along. ‘Don’t antagonise them Holly. Let’s go.’
‘Yeah, you listen to your playmate,’ sneered one of the balaclavas. ‘Even the wog has more sense than you.’
I’d faced down all sorts of people in the past. People who’d made wisecracks about Nicholas’s behaviour, about my procession of men, there wasn’t an insult I hadn’t heard. ‘They’re bullies. How dare they try to drive us out, we’re not doing anything wrong.’
I looked over at Vivienne and Isobel. Vivienne was shocked a blueish pale and her make-up stood out on her skin. Isobel looked frozen in mid-flight, half turned to head down the hill but obviously not wanting to leave us alone.
Then the Land Rover door opened. The guy with the gun jumped lightly down onto the snow, gun still held forward, fingers still wound near the trigger. Rufus growled but didn’t bark; I think that was because Megan had him in a headlock.
‘Do you want us to show you what happens to girls who don’t do as they’re told?’ His voice was soft, but it wasn’t only the fact he was wearing a mask that made him threatening, it was his whole body. The way he stood as though he had absolute control of the situation. ‘Naughty girls get punished,’ and he swung the gun up casually to hip level, pointing at Rufus. ‘And the Devil’s whores get what whores deserve.’
Now was so not the time to give him a lecture on the rights of women. I leaped away from him and ran, heading down the hill and hoping the others were following. Rufus took his cue from me and broke into a gallop, Megan overtook me half way down the hill on a bow-wave of snow. Isobel and Vivienne slipped and slithered behind me, I could hear their silent panic in the way they refused to let the snow impede their progress and leaped through drifts that had been detoured on the way up.
‘Ring the police,’ I gasped as we broke through Vivienne’s door and huddled together in the living room, one eye on the window in case the Land Rover had followed us down.
‘What on earth . . . ?’ Eve came in from the kitchen, comfortably aproned and motherly, carrying the teapot like the antithesis of what had just happened.
‘For starters, three men in a Land Rover waved a gun at us. Threatened us with . . . well, he wasn’t offering an evening at the cinema and boxes of Maltesers, was he? And one of them called Megan . . . well, a name.’
Vivienne leaned forward to catch her breath. She didn’t even raise a murmur at Rufus climbing onto the sofa. ‘And what do we say when the police arrive? We were taking a stroll up on the hill? We left the candles there. It wouldn’t take a detective genius to work out we’d been performing magic.’
‘Yeah? It’s not forbidden in the Court of Human Rights, you know. So, we lit a few candles, big deal. We didn’t sacrifice babies and shag a goat, did we?’
Eve limped over and pushed a hot mug of tea into my hand. ‘I understand what Vivienne is trying to say, Holly.’
‘Well I wish I did! In what universe do men get away with threatening women?’
‘Holly.’ Eve patted my hand. ‘If we ring the police and tell them that three men in a Land Rover had a shotgun and called you names . . . well, I hate to say it, but this is the countryside. And people go out shooting all the time. All we can say is that three unidentified men made threats. And if you are absolutely sure that it wasn’t poachers warning you off . . .’
‘If they were poachers, then . . .’ I suddenly thought about the men lurking in the woods near the Old Lodge, and the brace of pheasants, dripping blood. ‘I suppose they could have been. But they knew about the spells.’
‘They’d been watching, I’d guess. Judging the right moment to have a go at you. Out here poaching is a way of life for some people.’
‘Yeah, right up with hare coursing and incest.’
‘But you see what I’m saying? It could open a whole can of worms if you report it. Poachers guard their patch. They were warning you off so you couldn’t see anything which might get them identified.’
‘But . . .’ I looked around. Everyone was nodding. ‘But, Meg. You heard what they were calling you.’
Megan rubbed absently at Rufus’s scruff. ‘What, “black bitch”? God, Holl, I get worse than that behind the counter in British Home Stores. You should have heard what this woman said once, when we didn’t have the pelmets that she’d ordered. Bloody hell, I thought she was going to sell my ass into slavery or something.’
‘But you aren’t even . . .’
She sighed. ‘Dad’s Nigerian, Holl. Get over it.’
Vivienne came over, smoothing her hair into place. ‘And the police might get a bit curious about those candles, they could ask some awkward questions about exactly what we were doing up on the hill. Do you really want everyone to know that you practise witchcraft? Everyone you work with? Your family?’
I sat down beside Rufus. ‘It’s all a bit of fun. People will understand that, won’t they? That we just got together for some chanting and mucking around with a few spells?’
She looked at me, slightly sadly. ‘But there was blood. We used blood to concentrate the spell . . . I can’t believe I was so ridiculous . . .’
‘But it was only animal though, wasn’t it?’ Please God, Vivienne, say yes . . .
‘Of course. But can’t you see the angle that the newspapers will take, that we were fornicating with The Master, drinking blood and dancing naked under the full moon.’
I glanced dubiously out of the window. ‘In this?’
‘All right, maybe not the dancing naked thing. But you see what I mean? Would you find it easy to get work if that’s what people thought you did in your spare time? Because I don’t want to jeopardise my wish by having that kind of reputation.’
‘Nor me,’ Megan piped up. The tea and warmth had made her skin flush. ‘They scared us, that was all.’
‘No, that wasn’t all. They threatened us. With a shotgun. That goes a little bit beyond the Hammer House of Horror scary, it goes into the outright terrifying category.’ I looked around the room. All the women were looking somewhere else. Isobel and Megan were making an unnecessary amount of fuss of Rufus, Vivienne was stirring her tea with undue attention and Eve was poking the fire. ‘So you all think we should forget it?’
‘Not forget it. Ignore it. Be more careful in future, perhaps. More circumspect, certainly. Maybe find somewhere else to perform the rituals.’
‘No,’ Vivienne looked up at that. ‘It must be Dodman’s Hill. That traditionally has the most earth-energies; it’s on a ley line, and we need all the power we can muster to get the spell to work.’
‘Oh come on! What’s more important, some so-called magic or the possibility of getting our heads blasted off by a rapist wannabe?’
Their silence spoke for them, but then Vivienne piped up. ‘Don’t forget, Holly, just because the fulfilment of your wish has left you disappointed, the rest of us are still waiting. No one here wants to do anything to prevent the working of the spell.’
I shook my head. ‘You’re all bloody insane,’ I said, and walked out.